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With transit-hating Doug Ford as premier, forces are coalescing against LRT in Toronto

Rarely, if ever, has a major transit project received as much bad publicity as the St. Clair streetcar rebuild from Yonge St. out to the Stockyards, just west of Keele St.

By the time it was finished, political opportunists like Rob and Doug Ford had so discredited and demeaned the project that even commuters on the other side of town who had never driven the route routinely repeated the slur that the TTC had created a “disaster on St. Clair.”

A view of the underground cavern where Metrolinx is building Laird station for the Crosstown LRT on Eglinton Ave. (Randy Risling / Toronto Star)

The St. Clair streetcar became synonymous with an LRT, which is an upgraded, upscaled light rail transit system running on its own protected right-of-way.

And all the badmouthing meant that LRT had been devalued and smeared before Toronto had the opportunity to experience one.

The Eglinton Crosstown — a midtown essential transit line — was to be the change agent. If it worked brilliantly and displayed its power to transform a major avenue while moving large numbers of passengers shy of the hordes swallowed up by a subway, its efficacy would be unchallenged.

All those who have seen this beautiful mode of transit work in major cities should be uneasy today, because forces are coalescing against it.

The biggest current obstacle is the provincial government, led by a car-loving, transit-hating premier who believes transit exists to get people out of the way of cars, not to move people as efficiently as possible. So, get transit off the roads.

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Yes, governments change and policy changes with them. But by the time Ontarians oust Doug Ford — whether four or eight years hence — his transit folly will have ruined transit planning for decades and stopped the construction of LRTs along Sheppard and Finch, and possibly elsewhere.

The $5.3-billion Crosstown has a delivery date of 2021. It’s advanced enough that even the fatuous Ford won’t try to stop it.

But you can bet he is counting the faults associated with the project so he can use them to justify aborting Toronto’s other LRTs.

Construction is long and messy and disruptive to commuters and businesses, he’ll say (subway construction is similarly disruptive, but that will be discounted or forgotten).

Crosstown planners, despite the experience on St. Clair, have not perfected a path that does not strangle retailers along the route.

Rip up a street for seven, eight years and beleaguered store owners will weep and mourn despite the promise of a glorious and prosperous future.

Despite awarding the project to a private consortium, opening day could be delayed and the lawyers for both sides are now wrangling in court. More hiccups are bound to emerge.

Ford has already warned that Toronto’s projects are under review and reminded that his preference is “subways, subways, subways” — or, as his late brother the mayor said, we don’t want those damn streetcars clogging up our roads.

One of those LRT routes is along Finch Ave. W. — heading out to Ford’s riding of Etobicoke North — with millions and millions already spent.

Watch what the new premier does here.

Ford and his backers on city council oppose it for the wrong reason. They feel they deserve a subway — like the people of Vaughan given one by their former political master Greg Sorbara, or those in Richmond Hill who were promised one, and those in Pickering who the piffling Premier Ford says deserve a subway of their own. (Did we rip out the GO Train tracks?)

They ignore the fact that fewer than 10 per cent of people travelling from Rexdale in the morning are headed downtown, the subway’s destination.

Those passengers need fast, frequent transit options and connections — like a BRT akin to the one on Highway 7, or something even more flexibly routed so as not to exacerbate the truck traffic to the oil fields at Keele and Finch.

An LRT may be problematic along Finch. A subway is insanity — impossible for even the preposterous Premier Ford to promote on his fake news channel. More pointedly, a Finch subway would start to pay for itself, probably, maybe, in the next century.

Flawed though it may be, the argument for a subway over an LRT on Sheppard is easier to make.

Ditto for the decision to go with subway extension from Kennedy, instead of an LRT replacement for the Scarborough RT.

It’s almost a guarantee that the one-stop subway to Scarborough will now become a three-stop project, sucking money from the proposed LRT to U of T Scarborough.

That, in turn, bolsters the argument to loop it with the current Sheppard subway, stumped at Don Mills by the Mike Harris government.

Ford will argue that such an extension will unleash the Sheppard subway’s potential. But any independent cost-benefit analysis will tell a different story — one of perpetual taxpayer subsidies that drain the system beyond the life expectancy of anyone in high school today.

Wisdom calls for buses in protected lanes until they can’t handle the crush. Then, upgrade to LRTs where appropriate. Only then, employ the most expensive option of subway.

It’s not sexy. Citizens don’t think with their heads.

Politicians tell the voters what they want to hear. Decades hence, each will blame the other for the mess.

Ford propels us towards the abyss. And Crosstown crosses will only grease the path.

Royson James is a former Star reporter who is a current freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @roysonjames

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